Name: Dempsey Jerome Travis

Illinois Connection

Dempsey Travis was born and raised in Chicago.

Biographical and Professional Information

In addition to his writing Travis actively participated in the Civil Rights Movement. He was president of the Chicago chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1959 to 1960. During the latter year he coordinated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s first civil rights march in Chicago.

Selected Titles At Your Library

Few were more qualified than Dempsey Travis to write the history of African Americans in Chicago, and none would be able to do it with the same command of firsthand sources. This seminal paperback reissue of Travis's best-known work, An Autobiography of Black Chicago, depicts Chicago's African-American community through the personal experiences of Dempsey Travis, his family, and his circle. Starting with John Baptiste Point du Sable, who was the first non-Native American to settle on the mouth of the Chicago River, and ending with Travis's own successes leading the city's NAACP chapter, organizing Martin Luther King's first march in the city, and providing equal housing opportunities for black Chicagoans, An Autobiography of Black Chicago is a comprehensive yet intimate history of African Americans in 20th-century Chicago.